The infographic "Piracy is not theft" does an excellent job of how a digital file-sharer evaluates the situation, but the anti-file-sharing organizations MPAA & RIAA sees it otherwise and are now claiming that internet is stealing billions of dollars worth of their property by sharing digital copies of files.
To answer them, and with some creative twist to the situation "Jake Gold" has started an campaign "Send Them Your Money" to send the RIAA/MPAA billions of dollars. Inspired by this incident :
Hundreds of years ago a Japanese judge (Ōoka Tadasuke) handled a lawsuit by a paranoid innkeeper who accused a poor student of literally stealing the fumes of his cooking by eating when the innkeeper was cooking to flavour his dull food. Although his colleagues advised Ōoka to throw the case out as ridiculous, he decided to hear the case. The judge resolved the matter by ordering the student to pass the money he had in one hand to his other and ruling that the price of the smell of food is the sound of money. -- Wikipedia
Jake found a solution :
Let's just pay them the money! They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies to be just as valuable as the original. That makes it a lot easier to pay them back in two ways: a. We can email them scanned images of dollar bills instead of bulky paper and b. We don't have to worry about the hassle of shipping huge quantities of cash.
